LONDON Business School is to relaunch its PhD programme in September, providing full scholarships for students and more research training.

The school, part of the University of London, has diverted Pounds 400,000 from central reserves to enable it to waive the Pounds 7,000 fees and provide an Pounds 8,000 stipend for each student accepted for a PhD course from this September.

There is no repayment scheme attached to the package and no clawback of money from students who drop out.

The move has been forced partially by the fact that US business schools offer full scholarships. It was increasingly obvious that good students, who may have wished to study at LBS, were persuaded to study elsewhere solely because of the cost.

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In addition, from September the school will be running 12 research training courses, a total of 360 teaching hours, for students during the first 18 months of their PhD programmes. A ten-week, 30-hour, teaching training module will also be provided since many of the school's students subsequently enter academe.

PhD programme director Raymond Madden said: "It is costing us an arm and a leg but hopefully it will repay us many times over in terms of the quality of research students we attract and the benefits, direct and indirect, associated with alumni."

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LBS is also unusual in that it operates a performance-related pay scheme for research and lecturing staff. The school has two types of contract, fixed-term and open.

The scheme, introduced in 1990, is administered on an annual basis and uses five performance criteria: quality of teaching, research, good citizenship, external visibility (as an academic and business links) and academic administration.

Researchers will not be assessed for teaching, unless they do teach, but they will be assessed in terms of their research output, including income generated and work published.

All researchers will start on a fixed-term contract. One element of the performance assessment for lecturers is student feedback whereby students say what they think about their courses and the people who deliver them.

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